


Seven Lies for Seven Bullets

by rvst



Series: Outrun My Gun [3]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Western, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvst/pseuds/rvst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Though the last few weeks of my life now seem a whole lot less safe. Have you had that the entire time?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There Is No Mayor

Carmilla went about her morning like she had for the entire time Danny had been off in town. She woke up around noon, read the medical journals Danny delivered to their dead drop on the first evening, and lazed around the small cabin without the slightest bit of energy to do anything else.

 

Later, she would remember in a cold sweat in the dead of night that she almost put off checking the box that day. Several dark hours of nightmares followed here thereafter.

 

Stumbling through the woods, Carmilla cursed every fibre of Danny's being for making her walk halfway into town every day. They didn't need to be in such constant contact with each other and Danny certainly wasn't fetching too much of her stuff per day that they couldn't carry them in one trip.

 

Danny was going to receive a strongly worded letter about this, especially as it was just starting to get properly hot during the afternoon period Carmilla took her walk. Danny's legs were longer, therefore the box should be moved much closer to the cabin so Carmilla would have to walk less.

 

Or they could stop trading letters back and forth and actually hang around long enough to have a conversation face to face. Carmilla was bursting to tell Danny what she suspected Mother and the Mayor to be up to in the town, and she couldn't risk her theories finding their way into the wrong hands. Danny had made it clear that she felt the same way. Carmilla wondered if their theories aligned, or if there would be an argument.

 

Then Carmilla was going to berate her...Friend? Lover? No, not that. Her Danny, she was going to yell at her Danny. The asshole stole her morphine supply somewhere between her expedition from the car and her departure off into town proper. So Carmilla was going to have many furious words with her about that gross invasion of her property and privacy.

 

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

 

Carmilla froze then dropped to the ground. The voice was male, and booming throughout the woods. Her heart pounded in her ears, blocking out the sounds of the rest of the world for terrifying moments. Carmilla remembered Mother justifying their move to the town solely on the uninhabited nature of the woodlands next to it.

 

The accent was the same as the Mayor in their one visit to assure Mother of the town's potential, whatever that meant. Carmilla shivered, remembering the slimy, money-grubbing grin and easy charisma.

 

"Oh little lady!"

 

Different voice. Off in another direction. Closer to Carmilla. Her body refused to move, even though she screamed at herself. Running away or running towards the noises, she needed to do one or the other. Sitting still wasn't really an option. 'Little' wasn't the word Carmilla would use to describe Danny but the town didn't seem to have crime so there wasn't another possibility.

 

"Come out right now, Red, and we might not kill you!"

 

Towards them. Absolutely needed to run towards them.

 

Any doubts she may have had about the men being after Danny vanished. Something had gone wrong. Carmilla could beg and plead all she wanted, but from what little she'd experienced of Danny No-Last-Name-Given, if she had guns, she'd be shooting them.

 

Danny would have shot the bastards chasing her before she ran into the woods. Carmilla took the short logical leap to panic, and presumed immediately that Danny was somehow unable to fight back. Which meant that she was resorting to hiding to keep herself safe. Worse, despite her seemingly endless desire to protect and care for Carmilla, she was letting the men search the woods. They could very easily find the cabin tucked away behind a particularly heavy grouping of trees, and the young doctor tucked away inside.

 

"Fuck," she swore quietly. Carmilla didn't have the vaguest of clues as to how to defend herself, let alone how to take down at least two grown men. Who were probably armed since neither of them sounded like her Mother's lackeys, the damn accent again. Law enforcement, chasing Danny out of town. Possibly forcing her to run home, or to a safe place so they could find wherever the suspicious drifter was hiding Madam Karnstein's beloved doctor daughter. Or some such bullshit.

 

If Danny wasn't firing at the men, then she was probably hurt or already dead. Carmilla leaned heavily against a nearby tree to collect her options. Running back to the cabin and pretending she wasn't there if they came knocking sounded far too cowardly for her tastes, she'd faced men with guns before and barely flinched. Running away and abandoning this woman wasn't a real option.

 

Which left either trying to find Danny where these men were failing or going after the armed and probably trained men by herself. Then she would have to find Danny anyway, and if she was injured that could be the difference between life and death for her drifter.

 

There was no real choice. Carmilla wasn't armed, and even if she was, there were two of them and she wasn't trained to use any weapon she might have had anyway. Can't be brave, can't be cowardly. Sneaky was all that remained.

 

"Okay, where are you?" Carmilla questioned the woods. They didn't answer. "If I were an outdoors person, and knew about dead drops and carried guns and would ever think to drug a man to escape a murder charge, where the heck would I hide?"

 

The clearing fluttered through her mind, or the dead drop. Somewhere in the town itself or maybe Danny somehow got herself back to the cabin by some other route that Carmilla was unaware existed. She could make an argument for each choice.

 

If Carmilla was injured, what would she do?

 

That was a much easier question. Carmilla would go somewhere she knew another doctor could treat her, a hospital or a doctor's shopfront. Neither of those things were in the woods and Carmilla could have sworn she told Danny about the incompetence of the man she would have replaced had Mother not tried to kill her en route.

 

That eliminated going back into town. No help there. The clearing would be empty, so that was out.

 

Danny knew she would be checking the box at around this time. Either she was near the dead drop or she would have deliberately taken the most obvious route from it to the cabin. There was no way Danny would let Carmilla walk past her when she needed medical attention.

 

Carmilla strained her ears, hunting for any sign that the two men were near her current position. Hearing nothing out of place, she took off towards the dead drop box as fast as her legs would carry her.

 

The men continued to shout, occasionally one would react to nothing and fire his gun. This prompted the other to rush away from the dead drop, which Carmilla was endlessly amused by every time it happened. There had to be some larger animals in the woods, they couldn't be continually imagining an already injured woman stalking them through the evening light. Shadows, maybe.

 

Her legs burned with the effort of running through the sparse woodlands. The drop box was never further away than this before, though a thousand theories of the psychological effects of panic on the human mind went flying past her thoughts as a shock of red hair finally came into her view.

 

Carmilla cheered for herself and her correct deduction. Danny was on the ground, and not moving. Carmilla found her second wind immediately. As she got closer, she could see Danny's blue jeans were soaked with blood on one leg. She had a piece of paper clutched in one hand, and thankfully Carmilla could see her chest rising and falling.

 

Sliding to her knees next to her wounded Danny, Carmilla pressed her fingers into the densest concentration of blood, searching for the origin of the wound. Carmilla could see the hole in Danny's pants, but they'd moved around since Danny had clearly been shot so some investigation was required.

 

"Hey there, pretty lady," slurred Danny suddenly, causing Carmilla's fingers to press down a little bit too hard. Danny gave a strangled gasp of pain, and somehow kept her volume down despite what had to be excruciating pain. "Why?"

 

"Because you've been shot, you fucking idiot!" Carmilla hissed. She couldn't hear the men anymore, and they hadn't accidentally fired their weapons in a while. Quietly she hoped that they were out of ammunition and had to return back to town for more. "How did this happen?"

 

Danny was fading in and out of awareness. She held out the piece of paper, "for you, Doctor Princess."

 

Carmilla noted the rudimentary first aid Danny performed on her own leg, and deemed her safe enough to take a minute out for some light reading.

 

"Stay awake and unload the damn guns," Carmilla ordered softly. "You don't need any more holes in you and if I get shot, then we're both fucked."

 

Danny clumsily went about her work while Carmilla finished reading. She pulled on a handful on Danny's hair. "Ow! Why?"

 

"You stole my morphine, asshole!"

 

Danny giggled and threw the bullets in her hands at Carmilla. "Yes, yes I did."

 

Her eyes slid shut, Carmilla didn't think that she could lift the giant onto her feet and she certainly couldn't carry her. There was no way they were getting back to the cabin without Danny's help, however minimal.

 

"Hey, hey, hey," she prodded insistently. She kissed Danny's cheek to try and provoke a response. It worked, stunning Carmilla.

 

"Hi there," Danny slurred again. She grabbed at Carmilla's hair and pulled her in for a proper kiss. "I think I'm dying."

 

Carmilla felt a stabbing in her heart and her stomach ever fell out from underneath her. She kissed Danny with more force than was strictly necessary. "Before you do that, can you stand up for me? You're a lot bigger than me."

 

Danny groaned long and loud. Carmilla didn't find it cute, even with the seriousness of their situation. "Said couldn't."

 

Carmilla forced some of her water down Danny's throat, hoping the cool liquid would jolt some kind of energy into her Danny. "I know, that's why I'm going to help you, okay?"

 

Danny complied, gripping Carmilla's arm with more force than a vice. Carmilla had to grit her teeth against the pain as she used her free hand to drape the various guns all over herself. She kicked open the trunk to inspect the books Danny had obviously hauled out during the morning hours and sighed when she didn't see anything she especially wanted.

 

The worst part by far of Carmilla's entire afternoon was that Danny didn't even get her most collectible books. Not her favourite ones, just the ones with the most monetary worth.

 

When Danny was no longer at Death's door, Carmilla would be having many, many angry words with her-

 

Her Danny. Who was getting her blood all over Carmilla's nice new clothes. Damn woman was having a terrible day and she was just pissing off Carmilla as she went.

 

Thankfully, Danny's working leg seemed to move almost on its own. Carmilla wasn't nearly strong enough to carry Danny's entire weight on her own. She made her peace with the complete loss of everything she was forced to leave behind at the drop box. The guns were hanging from her body, all unloaded because there was no way in hell she could fix Danny if one of them were to go off and strike her again.

 

Danny was at maximum survivable injury levels. The 'things of Carmilla's' she was supposedly caught red-handed with weren't even things Carmilla had with her when she went 'missing'. Carmilla didn't know for sure, but she strongly suspected that whatever was in the letter stuffed into her back pocket was far more incriminating than simple kidnapping and murder.

 

During her time alone in the admittedly nice cabin, Carmilla had built up whatever secrets Danny had from a simple need for privacy all the way to being wanted for high treason and potential assassinations.

 

It only served to keep her in the cabin awaiting Danny's return when she was more than able to leave and survive on her own. She wasn't hurt anymore and Danny delivered enough of her savings during her first drop. Every town needed a doctor, Carmilla could live anywhere. She didn't need Danny anymore, she could take a few of the guns and just go.

 

Danny was dirty. Carmilla made a mental note to return to their clearing to fetch the money from wherever Danny left it buried. Her hands were caked with dirt, so much so that Carmilla could see it taking days to get out completely.

 

They struggled together until they were in sight of the cabin. Carmilla's entire body ached, she could only imagine how much pain Danny was in. She supposed the blood loss was weakening her perceptions of everything, even pain. The thought of pain only rankled violently in Carmilla's mind. Danny stole her morphine! It took her ages to get hold of that, and there wasn't anyone she knew outside of her university who could provide it to her.

 

Carmilla kicked open the door to the cabin, wondering why she didn't feel the need to ever latch it properly. Even though there was a near non-existent chance anything human could ever find the building in the middle of the woods, there was always a chance of animals creeping in while both her and Danny were gone.

 

Carmilla fixed Danny's wound as best she could, settling her in the absurdly comfortable bed. She did all she could and settled in for the long wait to see if her lover would survive her wounds.

 


	2. Shot Six Times Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny had poorly stitched up holes littering her body, providing Carmilla a hopelessly confusing map of her past. It was certainly a violent one. Carmilla was no longer shocked by how nonchalant Danny was about shooting people. Generally, you don't get shot at if you aren't willing to shoot back.

Thus far in the five day journey to reliable consciousness, Carmilla concluded three things for sure.

Firstly, she had totally earned her title. Danny's wounds were stitched up nicely and she was healing at a pace Carmilla was happy with. Years of her life had not been wasted if the skills could be used to save even one deserving life. The undeserving, they didn't count, and she already saved enough of them.

Second, Carmilla would go absolutely insane if she was left alone without company for any longer than a week. Danny was there but mostly non-responsive, so didn't really count. Including the time Danny spent in the town that she still didn't know the name of, Carmilla spent the better part of two weeks alone. She ran out of things to do by herself after three days.

Third, and most importantly, Danny had been shot before. More than once. Carmilla had to remove a lot of her clothing to properly treat her wounds. She'd seen her naked before, but that was in the dark and under blankets. Now she could see her in the light of day.

Danny had poorly stitched up holes littering her body, providing Carmilla a hopelessly confusing map of her past. It was certainly a violent one. Carmilla was no longer shocked by how nonchalant Danny was about shooting people. Generally, you don't get shot at if you aren't willing to shoot back.

Danny's dying confession burned on the small desk Carmilla claimed as her own. It was smeared with blood. Danny must have written it in the initial panic after her flight from town. Her second letter which she left clearly displayed on her lap was relatively clean and neat. Danny settled into the possibility of death with a remarkable calm.

Worrying. Yet oddly comforting. Danny knew how to treat her own gunshot wound. She'd probably saved her own life with her extremely basic 'do not bleed out' techniques.

The letter taunted her from its silent position.

 

* * *

 

Carmilla sat on the front step with Danny's simplest looking rifle sitting in her lap. She spent the twilight hours of each night guarding her companion and considering what she would say when Danny was finally coherent again.

All she had so far was a long-winded rant about not telling the person you expect to bury you what you want done. Words you want said. The unopened letter screamed at her. It probably said what Danny wanted done.

A thousand excuses as to why she could have opened it rushed through Carmilla's mind immediately. The only one she thought would possibly work boiled down to: 'your heart stopped and I thought you were dead'. Carmilla remembered her frantic desire to save Danny's life. It would never be believable, Danny's big blue eyes would see right through her lies.

Her finger itched to curl around the trigger, to practice firing the weapon she might have to use to defend both of their lives from men who shot things for a living. There was no way she could outgun any of them, so she was left with the option of lying to whomever showed up and praying that Danny didn’t make any noises while she was attending to the intruders. The only other way she could possibly win in a firefight was if she was behind the suspiciously thick walls of the cabin Danny had directed her towards when they parted ways.

Drifters generally didn’t have cabins in the middle of the woods to call a temporary home, especially not such well fortified ones. In her inspection of the kitchen, she found knives that weren’t at home in a kitchen and didn’t look like the hunting knife Danny kept in her bag. There was a machete in one of the closets. This wasn’t a hunting cabin like Carmilla knew them to be. One machete didn’t cement this in her mind, but there was absolutely something off about the boxes of rifle and revolver ammunition she had found underneath the only bed in the cabin.

Danny groaned in her sleep. Carmilla’s finger itched again, begging to go check on her and hoping that there would be an immediate threat she could blast away without a second thought. Danny had obviously killed people before, she was far too comfortable with a gun for it to be otherwise, and Carmilla wished that she had taken the time in her youth to develop such experiences.

 

* * *

 

Carmilla was seconds away from ripping open Danny's bloodstained letter, the curiosity nearly getting the better of her. She had it in her hands, turning it over while carefully avoiding the splotches of dried blood covering it.

Danny moaned, the noise startling Carmilla so deeply that she ripped the paper in two. She tossed them in the general direction of the fireplace in a panic. Carmilla went bright red, and suddenly knew that she really didn't want to invade Danny's privacy like that, curiosity be damned. The guilt piled on her heart immediately, weighing her down.

"I think that went well," Danny said, her voice gravelled and strained. Carmilla hesitated before meeting bright eyes, shining with relative health and happiness. "Did you get the stuff?"

Carmilla laughed in disbelief. "Not worried about how long you've been out or anything?"

Danny snorted. "You're a super awesome doctor lady! I'm sure I'm fine," she stated with what Carmilla could only presume to be her usual calm confidence. Carmilla could only stare.

She eventually stood to light the wood in the fireplace. Get rid of any evidence she was considering reading Danny's dying confession. Also the sun was going down and the cabin got cold at night. Carmilla's nights alone were spent wishing for her furnace back.

"While I am a super awesome doctor, I think your speedy recovery has more to do with the other bullet holes you have than anything I did," Carmilla said nonchalantly, focusing on lighting the fire. She pretended to ignore Danny's confused strangled noise. "Maybe your body has developed a partial immunity to bullets. I would love to write a paper about you."

Danny groaned again. "I've been shot six times not including this one and that's all I'm saying."

Carmilla didn't say a word. She didn't even give any indication that she'd heard Danny's weak words.

"This is by far the worst one?"

Carmilla continued to ignore her, and would continue to do so until it stopped working. The fire was refusing to light anyway, so she couldn't spare one iota of her attention to respond to Danny's questioning tone.

"Your stitching is by far the neatest I've ever gotten," Danny noted, the whine suddenly out of her voice. "I was a clumsy kid, two of the getting shot incidents were entirely accidents."

Carmilla believed that Danny had been shot six times in her life. A person being shot by accident twice was stretching her a little thin, belief-wise. She sighed heavily, striking another match unsuccessfully.

"Remember the worried kissing?" Danny asked after Carmilla lit seven more matches without acknowledging that she'd even spoken. "Can we please go back to the worried kissing?"

Carmilla could hear her pouting. She decided that she couldn't turn around for any reason. The pouting would win her over immediately. She'd tell Danny everything about herself, without holding back. Her time at university and everything she knew about her Mother, just confessed straight up to assuage the guilt that was returning more by the second.

She was expecting Danny to tell her things she obviously didn't want to share.

"Stop pouting and we'll talk about it," Carmilla replied finally. If only to get Danny to not ask her anything about herself. She lit the fire with one match, like she had during her nights alone. "If you stay the fuck in the bed and absolutely do not think about moving too much."

"Damn, no kisses," Danny whispered from directly behind Carmilla. The doctor turned slowly, coming face to face with her Danny's grinning face. "Hi there."

"No kisses for you then," she asserted. "Why?"

"I've been sitting around not doing anything for days, I want to be up and moving and doing things and-"

"Getting hurt some more?" Danny's expression only brightened.

"Exactly! You understand!" Danny bounced up and down, wincing and clutching at her injured leg. "Maybe I should go be in bed for a little while."

Carmilla couldn't help it. She leaned forward and pressed their lips together for a moment. "Yes, you should."

Danny kissed her quickly. "I really don't want to."

"You were shot, and nearly bled out. You see the seriousness of the situation, right?"

Danny made non-committal noises in the back of her throat. "Seriously, bullet wound seven isn't much different to the first six."

"I am appalled that you would ever say something like that," Carmilla stated seriously. It made her memories of medical school crawl around in her mind, begging to attack this woman who took a near-fatality so flippantly. “Especially to your new doctor friend, really rude.”

Danny continued to be smug and attractive and Carmilla wanted to kiss her again. Danny obliged with her unspoken urge, grasping Carmilla’s jaw and pulling her in for a longer kiss. Carmilla lost herself in it for longer than she cared to admit, and deliberately placed her hand on Danny’s uninjured thigh. She had nearly lost Danny to a bullet and with Mother trying to kill her, Carmilla didn’t see any other immediate future for herself. Heart aching with a potential loss of someone she cared about, Carmilla leaned heavily into the warm body next to her. Danny’s free hand reached to pull Carmilla into her lap out of what Carmilla presumed to be instinct. Carmilla had to break the kiss before she was redoing stitched on the idiot’s thigh.

“Maybe not put weight on top of your thighs right now? I only have so many stitches on me and they are quite expensive,” Carmilla whispered against Danny’s lips, pecking them between the occasional word. “Perhaps you would prefer some more sleep, something to eat, or telling your current medical professional your medical history regarding bullet wounds?”

Carmilla pushed at Danny’s mysterious aura without any expectation for an actual answer out of the other woman. Danny frowned, going cross-eyed as she attempted to see both of Carmilla’s eyes at once. Carmilla giggled and nearly forgot that this goofball had been shot seven times and probably did something to deserve at least five of them.

“I will trade you one cuddles for one story,” Danny offered, fingers tracing down Carmilla’s throat. “Both to be paid immediately and must be in bed because I am in a lot of pain and I very much regret taking all of your morphine while I was running away.”

Carmilla pulled away first after a brief staring contest, she outstretched a hand to Danny, helping the woman to her feet and giving her a shoulder to lean on as her leg gave out from the exhaustion of being shot. Together they stumbled over to the bed and barely manoeuvred themselves underneath the heavy blankets with all four arms and all four legs struggling to interlock without causing further damage to Danny’s injured leg.

Lying flat on her back, Danny held out her arms to draw Carmilla into her side. Despite her better judgement, knowing how much someone else’s knee into a wound of this particular size could hurt. They were still out of painkillers of any kind after the loss of the morphine to said bullet wound. Going forward, Carmilla would have to medicate with alcohol and nothing else until she could get into town and replenish her supplies. Though she wanted nothing more than to curl up into Danny, the practicality instilled in her by two decades of living with Mother along with her training prevented her from taking too many risks. She shuffled as gently as possible into her Danny, pressing their bodies together lightly.

“That all I get?” Danny bemoaned her poor luck, with a happily exploring hand finding its way underneath Carmilla’s shirt nonetheless. “Girl gets herself shot and she can’t even get a little love?”

Carmilla dismissed any seriousness in Danny’s words as the other woman winked at her and leaned forward to place a kiss in her hair. “Am I in the bed?” Danny frowned but nodded all the same. “Then you’re getting all the love I have for you and not one bit more.”

Danny sighed and resigned herself to a night of having this amazing woman close but not quite close enough for her liking. Though Danny would have Carmilla in her bed at all times, with the world falling away and absolutely no guilt holding her back.

“Can you deal with that or do I need to go elsewhere for a decent night’s sleep without you pouting at me for not wanting sex with a formerly practically dead woman?” Carmilla pressed further, softening the blow by leaning into Danny’s wandering hand. Danny huffed in half-hearted annoyance.

“Technically, you’ve already slept with a previously almost dead woman, so I don’t see how that’s relevant,” argued Danny, poking at one of her other bullet wounds to illustrate the point. “Again: your stitching is so much better and isn’t going to scar nearly as badly as the other hatchet jobs I’ve had done over the years.”

Danny, keeping her mind occupied with exploring the expanse of Carmilla’s skin and tangling their fingers together, didn’t notice the curious look Carmilla set her with at her rambling praise.

“What’s the worst one in terms of stitching job?” Carmilla prodded as innocently as she could muster with her deep and inherently dark voice. She could never get away with anything when she was younger because of it. “I think it’s the one on your hip, and I’ll be nice and not ask about how the hell you can walk after being shot there.”

Danny snorted in amusement at the memory. “Some asshole thought I cheated him at poker in an after hours game at this bar I was working at a couple years back,” she began, toying with the tips of Carmilla’s long hair. “He was bluffing, throwing off anyone’s attention from the pair of aces he had tucked up his sleeve, but clearly he panicked and went through with his threats. All ‘I’m going to shoot your ass, you lying, cheating bitch!’”

Carmilla burst in involuntary laughter at Danny’s ridiculous impersonation of the man who shot her. He was clearly an inbred gentleman who acquired his accent from breaking guitar strings. “And he just shot you, no arguing, just bullets?” Carmilla had to press forward, Danny’s gleaming eyes too good let go.

“It was only the one bullet and it was from this tiny gun with pathetic little bullets,” Danny explained further. “It did a massive amount of damage to my flesh and muscle and as far as I know completely missed the bone.”

Resisting the urge to slap her Danny’s lucky face, Carmilla buried her face in the tempting neck instead. She giggled as Danny squirmed under the tickling of her breath on her sensitive throat. “I can’t tell if you’re the most or least lucky person I’ve ever met, and it’s frustrating.” She regretted her choice of words as Danny’s muscles constricted in a full body laugh. “Oh god, what?”

Danny’s voice dropped low, “I frustrate you?” Carmilla stabbed her finger into her stomach by way of reprimand for the horrible question. “Don’t doctors have to take a vow of no harm doing or some crap like that?”

Pressing her advantage over the now whining woman, Carmilla flattened her palm against Danny’s stomach and dragged her nails through the fine hairs she found. “You are extremely frustrating, and I will harm all I want thank you very much.”

Danny squeezed her closer while Carmilla moaned out a complaint. “So you don’t want to hear about my bastard boss who tried to fix my annoyingly severe bullet wound and how I made a grown man cry?”

Carmilla smiled and cuddled as close to Danny as the other woman wanted. She was alive and awake, everything else was a bonus for Carmilla.


	3. An Average Medical Student

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Though the last few weeks of my life now seem a whole lot less safe. Have you had that the entire time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Carmilla backstory! Yay!

Carmilla emptied her medical bag while Danny was out exercising her legs. It was bad enough that the other woman got into her highly limited supply of morphine and used it all up, Carmilla did not need her identifying some of the other substances she had scattered all through her bag. These stoppered vials were all unlabelled, so anyone without Carmilla’s level of experience with them would probably end up getting themselves killed in search of a high not a one of the liquids would provide.

One of them shattered during transit. The smell was subtle, but there. Anyone else would have put it down to their surroundings or the normal scents that tended to settle around the medical profession. The bag smelt like death. Danny was lucky Carmilla liked to keep her painkiller supplies well-marked. If she ever needed them, Carmilla probably wouldn’t be in the best mental state and her judgement might be obscured by whatever pain she was in at the time. Many of her needles had snapped into pieces, a mass of metallic shards came flying out of the supposedly empty bag when she turned it upside down and shook it to get the dregs of the shattered vial out.

Danny was going to pay for the damage she had done to Carmilla’s bag. Carmilla worked for months to pay for that much morphine, most medical students didn’t have the kind of access she had to heavier drugs that Carmilla swung on the regular. Then again, most medical students weren’t the local nurse and doctor for organised crime in the area. The pay was beyond excellent and was the main reason for the proposal Carmilla was rehearsing in her mind before she presented it to Danny. The other woman was sure to be a hard sell on the subject despite her apparent urge for adventure.

Carmilla needed to get to her bank account before Mother had an idea and decided to check on her favourite daughter. The balance was astronomical and Mother didn’t need any more money than she already had. Carmilla needed to cash out, and fast. Danny would never go for it. All of her bravado couldn’t possibly be real and still at the same level after being shot and nearly killed by the sheriff’s men. The sheriff’s men who probably went back into town and tattled to Mother immediately about the woman they were almost certain had kidnapped Carmilla on her way home. There was no way her Mother was going to admit to the local law that she had tried to have her daughter killed on her way home by a drugged and brainwashed man, so Danny would be cleverly and subtly blamed for everything that happened to Carmilla since she left medical school.

They needed to go into town and it would likely end with the sheriff and his men finishing what they started five days ago. Carmilla would end up back under Mother’s iron heel, struggling to find the independence she’d found getting her degrees away from the home that never felt like home. It certainly wasn’t warm. Though Danny would be dead if Mother and the sheriff had their way so Carmilla considered herself the better off between the pair of them.

Danny made more noise than a wounded elephant on her way back from her walk. Carmilla instinctively wanted to hide away all of her supplies, and she blushed at the reflex. They were stuck in an odd limbo between trust and privacy where they would risk death for each other but were yet to fully introduce themselves. No one else in her life would be allowed an unobstructed view of her bag, and almost everyone else she knew was at least aware of either her last name or what she actually did with her downtime at medical school. The dichotomy sent her sense of trust into a tailspin that she worried would end up with her crashing into the side of a cliff.

With two hares slung over her shoulder, Danny entered the cabin to exasperated glaring from her current roommate. “What?” Danny asked, eyes wide and twisting to see if there was some kind of threat behind her that she somehow hadn’t noticed. “Did something happen while I was out?”

Carmilla wanted to inject the woman with a tiny amount of the totally not poisons sitting in the vials on the table in front of her, though the urge struck her as slightly too homicidal for so early in the day. “When you woke up this morning, you could barely walk. And now you’ve decided you’re okay enough to go hunting in the wilderness. Unarmed!” Carmilla seethed, working herself up into a lather over how stupid Danny could get when she had an idea in her head.

Danny backed up into the closed door, holding out her hands to assuage some of the anger flying her way. “These are from traps I set weeks ago, there were some pretty rotten ones out there too if you want to go and see?”

“I’ve held intestines from a human corpse over one full week old, little bunnies aren’t exactly a big icky for me, Red,” hit back Carmilla, taking one of her full vials in hand and brandishing it at Danny. “This? Could kill you, those two, and just about everything else running around in those woods with some left over. Why didn’t you goddamn arm yourself before going out?”

Danny’s face went completely white. “Sorry, Doctor Scary, will not leave again without the super poisons you are carrying for some reason,” she promised in the most soothing voice she could muster. “Though the last few weeks of my life now seem a whole lot less safe. Have you had that the entire time?”

The vial nearly cracked in Carmilla’s hand, right as she realised what she had said in her blind worried rage. Danny really did not need to know what was actually in the little glass containers Carmilla had in her medical bag. She could have gotten away with brushing them all off as secondary tools of her trade, bases for medicines, or even diagnostic methods.

“I’m bluffing?” Carmilla wasn’t asked once in her entire time working for the organisation she keenly avoided calling the mob even inside her own head about what the hell she thought she was doing. There wasn’t a single iota of law enforcement interest on her with her good looks and introverted nature. Carmilla Karnstein was the most innocent person attending the school if not the entire town build around the university. Therefore, she hadn’t exactly developed the excellent lying under pressure skills literally everyone else in the organisation needed just to stay alive and out of jail day to day.

“Why do you have poison?” Danny pressed her again, worry creeping into her voice. Carmilla didn’t seem like the type of person to kill people by poisoning them. Danny could clearly picture this woman gruesomely stabbing a man to death, she would want her victim to know who killed them and you just didn’t get that kind of result with poisons. “Or are we putting this in the ‘it won’t hurt you so I’m not saying’ pile?”

Carmilla wanted desperately to jump on the opportunity Danny laid at her feet, but that pile was getting big and another secret just might bring it crashing down around them. “I’m all for creating a ‘this could kill us both in seconds and I still don’t want to come clean’ pile? This goes there,” she finished lamely.

The display of honesty stopped Danny in her train of thought. Her body continued to move towards the kitchen area to prepare the hares for eating, but her mind shut off completely. Sure, she knew that her family would probably try to kill her at this point, however they wouldn’t murder everyone around her like Carmilla’s skeletons apparently would. Danny took her knife to the skin of the hare and let her mind run wild for a minute. Across the cabin from her, Carmilla kept perfectly still, grasping the vial of poison with panic while she considered taking drastic action if Danny took this little revelation the wrong way. Danny didn’t notice her partner considering preemptive murder, if she had, Carmilla would have been saved almost a full minute of worry and heartbreak.

“Is there something we could do to escape whatever has you thinking you need to carry powerful poisons?”

Danny’s words broke the silence between them so swiftly that Carmilla almost dropped the vial, and Danny stabbed cleanly through the hare even though she was the one who spoke. Cursing her herself, Danny struggled to pull the knife free of the wooden board she was working on. While she was wrestling with the knife, Carmilla was considering the question.

The conclusion she drew was an obvious one.

“We could change pretty much everything about ourselves and flee the country right now, after we go to the bank and clean me out,” she answered without considering how Danny would take her words. “You are probably linked to me as far they’re concerned, so we would have to go together.”

Danny successfully freed her knife from its wooden prison, resuming her work on the hares without acknowledging that Carmilla had even spoken. She got most of the skin off the first one before she deliberately embedded the blade into the wood. Carmilla jumped at the loud thump and decided to put the vial of poison down before she dropped it accidentally and killed them both. She hadn’t looked at it properly and it could have been one of the ones that proved deadly when airborne.

“Aside from the drastic, last resort option,” Danny started, advancing on Carmilla until the smaller woman was backed against the entrance to their little cabin in the middle of nowhere. Carmilla was grateful that the other woman had put the knife down first. “Is there anything we can do, like practically?”

Carmilla craned her neck backward to maintain eye contact with Danny, for once the other woman was using her far superior height to her advantage. Carmilla did not like it even remotely. Danny had a point though, even though she was being extremely threatening for her usual joviality. Carmilla pointed to her pile of poisons wordlessly. Danny’s eyebrows furrowed together as she visibly tried to decide if Carmilla meant using the poison on themselves or whoever was after them.

Feeling the weight of a probable killing looming over her, Carmilla longed to have something to defend herself. Just as she was beginning to formulate a potential plan of attack, Danny grinned. Not in a predator way, more of a ‘you’re so much more dangerous than I initially thought and I find this hot’ way. Carmilla halted all plans of attack, and focused on looking as mysterious as possible. It was not hard and Danny’s lips were on her own within moments.

Initially, she didn’t like the way her back had to bend, moulding into Danny’s body as the other woman stooped to reach Carmilla’s lips. Then Danny’s hands were at the small of her back and her arms were looped around the taller woman’s neck and it didn’t seem so bad. Besides, standing was probably the best case scenario for Danny’s leg when compared with trying to hold herself up on top of Carmilla or trying to support Carmilla’s weight underneath her. Therefore, Carmilla started to worry as Danny began the process of dragging them both back towards the bed.

Despite her worry, Carmilla wondered what the sex would be like if they actually had a chance to do it on a bed

“We’re dead anyway if it catches up with you, right?” Danny asked, her voice hushed as she kept her lips close to Carmilla’s. Carmilla hummed in the positive, her eyes not leaving Danny’s lips. She had mostly forgotten about their conversation, Danny had that effect on her. “Then we, very carefully, bullet hole and all, make the most of our time remaining together and scratch the damn itch that’s been driving me insane for two full days now.”

“You have two hands, don’t you?” Carmilla teased, nipping at Danny’s lower lip. “Wandering drifter seems like an occupation with more alone time than the company of a warm body, I would think you could deal with your own itches just fine.”

Danny’s chest rumbled as she snarled at the other woman. “Must you be so mean to me? I bring you dinner and all I get is lip,” Danny sighed, smirking at her own words like she was a linguistic genius. “Some neck or some breas-”

“Yes, you made a funny,” Carmilla interrupted the smug satisfaction before it could get going. She didn’t need it while her heart was racing with fear and her lungs were refusing to work properly. “You’re taking this very well, which isn’t suspicious at all.”

Danny distracted that line of thought by dragging Carmilla roughly back toward the bed, insistently tugging at her belt loops as they went. “We both have our problems and I was all but dead a few days ago. Death and I have made our peace,” she murmured, gently lowering herself down onto the rough blankets.

Carmilla let herself be distracted by delicately working around Danny’s wounds and pushing the mob from her mind. They had no idea where Mother moved, so they were safe until she made herself known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be sure to leave a comment if you want more of this AU outside of this story.
> 
> I mean, I like it but I could drop it where I've finished this story.


	4. Not In Pain Or Afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bending her knee hurt. Walking hurt. Standing hurt. Hell, lying down hurt, and Danny didn’t say a damn word about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imaginary Devils needs more editing than I thought considering the continuity it has to conform to at the end, so here's more of this.

Bending her knee hurt. Walking hurt. Standing hurt. Hell, lying down hurt, and Danny didn’t say a damn word about it. If she did, Carmilla might try and get her some more painkillers. That would lead, in Danny’s half-baked theorising, to the other woman going back to whatever she was running away from, and Danny didn’t want that under any circumstances. Unless she was dying again, then Danny could deal with Carmilla throwing herself to the wolves of her past. The pain was sending her mad, sex was an especially bad idea and there was no way she was resorting to the alcohol solution her companion proposed when she had been caught wincing the morning after.

Danny kept as much distance as the little cabin afforded her between herself and the young doctor. Finding out the nice young lady you saved from an attempted hit had a bag full of poisons that she was now fiercely protective of didn’t exactly inspire a fountain of trust. Though she knew she had her own skeletons that could prove just as fatal as whatever Carmilla was dancing around telling her, Danny was wary of telling the other woman.

There were so many good opportunities in the days before she had been shot to come clean, and stupid Danny Lawrence took exactly none of them.

Danny grinned at Carmilla over her thick stew, hiding the throbbing in her thigh and forcing her heart to beat at a more reasonable pace. She couldn’t let it show. Carmilla was already shaken up over her past coming out, despite how little information she had actually given out. With what she had been accidentally given, Danny couldn’t even infer if Carmilla had something related to her Mother coming to kill her or if it was from her time away getting her education and that medical degree that had already saved Danny’s life once. If it was from medical school, then all Danny could consider was that Carmilla had some kind of Frankenstein situation was hiding back behind her. Perhaps Carmilla had figured out the secrets of life and death, and was being hunted by persons unknown for what she knew. The government might even be after Danny’s partner.

“I need to see your leg at some point tonight,” Carmilla told her, inspecting the chunky vegetables Danny fetched from somewhere in the area around the cabin. Danny really didn’t want to admit where she was getting the produce, that would end with Danny confessing about herself and the sins associated with the Lawrence name that she carried on her back no matter where she went. She lucked out at her meeting with Carmilla, a seemingly sheltered rich girl who didn’t give even a single fuck about the people her parents most likely did business with.

Then Carmilla had to go and be involved with poisons and morphine Danny now considered wasn’t exactly legally obtained. The likelihood that Carmilla was actually aware of who Danny was skyrocketed immediately, and Danny hadn’t been able to settle fully since their standoff the night before.

“It doesn’t smell and it isn’t still bleeding, what could be wrong with it?” Danny asked, poking at the stitching with the end of her spoon’s handle. Carmilla sighed with the suffering of a doctor with an unwilling patient. Ready to be fixed when the wound was potentially fatal, yet unwilling to put in the time and care to prevent silly little things like infection from occurring and killing them just the same as blood loss and shock would, if not more efficiently. Infection could be silent and some people never noticed until it killed them. Carmilla was happy to bully Danny into maintaining her wound, it gave her good practice for injured children later on if she lived long enough to be a proper doctor.

“Nothing,” Carmilla conceded with an indulgent grin. “I intend to keep it that way and your stitches might be ready to come out anyway.”

Danny brightened at this news, sitting straighter in her chair and spearing a piece of meat with her fork. “After this?” Carmilla nodded. “Then bed?”

Carmilla rolled her eyes at the pathetic attempt a seduction and considered turning Danny down immediately or at least making her work for it. That would show her, and make her put a little more effort into getting inside Carmilla’s pants.

“Does it hurt?” Carmilla brushed beyond the pass Danny made at her rather than admit that she totally wasn’t going to turn the woman down, especially while she was smirking at her all knowingly and confident. “It has to hurt, are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”

Danny’s smirk was gone instantaneously. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said quickly, suspiciously quickly. “Would that be the heavy duty alcohol that makes me cry just smelling it or the apothecary full of medicine you apparently just have?”

Carmilla watched Danny’s entire body flinch into a wince, regret and remorse filling her face as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “It’s okay, I’m still a little freaked out by how many guns you own, how much you’ve been in situations where being shot was the conclusion. Some poison on my part is just evening the field as far as I’m concerned.”

Danny relaxed, worry abated by Carmilla’s seemingly rational argument. Danny had guns, the knowledge of how to use them, and clear evidence that her little foray into town wasn’t the first firefight she had ever been in. Some poison didn’t stack up and Danny was being ridiculous in her sudden onset fears regarding this tiny woman she was effectively living with. She let the matter drop, leaving it to build further in the back of her mind until it exploded in both of their faces. 

“Didn’t get an answer on the straight to bed after dinner idea,” pressed Danny, slyly staring at Carmilla through her eyelashes. Her stew was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. “Because I personally think it’s a stroke of brilliance that will never be matched as long as we’re both breathing. Also a great way to make the time we have left matter!”

Chuckling under her breath, Carmilla quickly finished the last of her dinner and walked as seductively as she knew how to over to the meagre basin. Danny watched her go, wincing as she remembered personally installing the metal tub. The old wound on her calf throbbed with phantom pains at the memory, and her eyes were drawn to where the idiot who decided sneaking up on her was a good idea died his slow, gut-shot death. His usually bright red hair ended up caked in his own dark blood as it spread around him. Danny had to shake her entire body and abandon her almost finished food to get the memory out of her head. Carmilla would notice her sudden unease and start to worry. That would lead to questions she couldn’t afford to answer right now.

Maybe later.

“You say that like we’re going to die tomorrow,” Carmilla threw over her shoulder as if the notion was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. As if she hadn’t admitted that her past could kill them at any given moment, and as though Danny didn’t clearly have her own history to contend with. Danny history, which was well advertised as involving more than a few instances of bullets flying at her body.

“We might, or maybe the day after, or when the owner of this cabin comes calling, and we have to leave eventually,” Danny listed. She froze at her own little slip, failing to remember if she told Carmilla about the origins of their humble home or not. “Leaving is what I think is going to get us, but I am willing to be surprised.”

The fine hairs on Carmilla’s arms and the back of her neck stood at attention as Danny’s flippant attitude towards death reared its head yet again.

“On the bed, pants off,” she ordered, pushing the sudden stab of panic lancing into her heart. Danny was a little too enthusiastic about following orders and hissed in a breath as she pulled her pants over her thighs a tiny bit too roughly and grazed the stitches. “Sit on the bed first, dummy.”

Danny went bright red, partially out of her own idiocy but mostly from halting her urge to scream at the white hot pain shooting down her leg. Carmilla was watching and the doctor didn’t need Danny complaining over her own mistake clouding her opinion of her. Wanting to remain reasonably attractive to Carmilla involved keeping herself seeming reasonably intelligent and showing off her toned muscles as much as possible. The height thing also seemed to keep Carmilla’s interest better than almost anything else besides messing up her hair on purpose.

Sitting on the bed, Danny quickly removed the offending pants and caught Carmilla’s intentions mere moments before she said something unreasonably stupid like making another pass at the woman. Don’t be stupid, Danny told herself, she might leave. “Ready when you are, doc!”

Carmilla wasn’t disappointed that Danny didn’t presume they were skipping her exam for sex, she had been with women who had nothing but sex on the brain and she wasn’t looking forward to the potential future where Danny’s attitude toward the act shifted. If she kicked into overdrive with it, Carmilla would have to leave though it would probably kill her.

“Try to hold your leg still and I recommend closing your eyes,” she said in her well-practised doctor voice. “This probably won’t hurt, but we should be prepared regardless. Where’s the alcohol?”

Danny winced at the mention of the evil devil juice, even though she knew what Carmilla needed it for, then winced further because she knew how much that was going to hurt when Carmilla went to clean the damn wound again.

“It’s next to the door, you moved it in case we need to defend ourselves with a massive amount of fire,” she supplied with great hesitance. “You have noticed this place is made entirely of wood right? It would burn too.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes as she crossed the floorboards of the cabin. “I am aware, but it would give us a chance to escape through that false wall neither of us are admitting is there, and every moment will count if we’re ever attacked. I need it there because I’m not exactly confident in my shooting abilities,” Carmilla explained, rifling through her cleaned out medical bag to pull out her pouch of stitches, a needle, and her tiny scissors to remove Danny’s existing ones. “You shoot, I’ll firebomb them, and the rest of the woods, and the cabin. Then we run the fuck away and very much don’t die.”

Danny shrugged. “If you want to do that, I’m down,” she agreed without a care in the world leaking into her voice. Danny almost believed her own nonchalance. “I would rather die by shooting or fast acting poison than smoke inhalation or burning, but if that’s what you want,” she trailed off as she caught an eyeful of the murder spreading throughout Carmilla’s body. 

“Could you please stop that? I intend to live a long life and I don’t need you giving up on me so soon,” Carmilla said, the threat clear in her voice. The way she brandished both the needle and the bottle of alcohol made Danny flinch in fear. Even more than she felt at the prospect of death. “Now sit fucking still so I can make sure you aren’t going to die on me without any outside help.” Danny stayed perfectly still, barely breathing and closing her eyes so her blinking couldn’t give her away as a person Carmilla could attack.

“Technically-” The plan to stay rigid and unmoving lasted less than two seconds as her mouth ran away from her. As per usual.

“Fucking technically the asshole who shot you would be ultimately responsible,” Carmilla snapped, forcing Danny’s knee against the bed without warning. Danny hissed again. “However, we would both share the blame if you died from it now you’re out of the shock and blood loss danger zones, and I have only ever lost one patient and the Lord God would have had a fight on his hands to save that idiot.”

Danny let her rant, trying to let the detail slip from her mind. Carmilla wouldn’t appreciate her using words spoken in anger, frustration, and worry against the doctor later. “Tell me when you’re about to touch it so my leg doesn’t jump?”

Carmilla felt the anger flow out of her. “Why are you okay with all of this? You don’t hesitate to go running off into situations that could kill you. Do you even have a sense of self preservation?”

Danny could tell Carmilla was just making herself feel better with her ranting, so she took the questions to be rhetorical. Carmilla told her to brace and she curled her hands into fists to fight off the stinging pain of Carmilla pulling on her stitches and the inevitability of the alcohol bath her wound would be getting.

Keeping an eye trained on Danny’s expression, and the microscopic twitches of her muscles, Carmilla deliberately tugged a little too hard on the stitches as she snipped them, ready for removal and replacement. Carmilla saw the pain flood through the woman lying beneath her, and consoled her concerns about her Danny.

If she felt pain, fear had to be in there somewhere. With it, there would be a desire to survive.

There had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, comment if you want more after this story's done. Or if there's another AU you want (please not the Pacific Rim one, I got nothing there)


	5. I Want To Tell You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We are partners, you shoot things, I’ll patch you up when this inevitably goes to hell in a hand basket.”

Carmilla had seen hundreds of patients over her short and informal career as a mob doctor. Not one of the tough guys or girls that made up the majority of her low-level customers healed quite as well as this random drifter she only knew because her Mother tried to kill her while she was on her way home from medical school. The decision to force her driver to pull over several weeks ago had lead to her discovering the medical marvel that was Danny.

The woman shrugged off a fucking bullet wound like it was nothing and continued on with her life like it was the most normal thing to happen to anyone. The other six bullet holes she had on her body suggested that this random drifter, who Carmilla did not believe for a moment was actually a drifter, actually did get shot enough for it to be a regular occurrence in her life. That was the only explanation Carmilla had for her remarkable discovery. Before she was kidding, but now Carmilla gave serious thought to her first paper put up for publication in a medical journal being dedicated to the incredible woman whose body rejected the effects of bullets.

Carmilla wanted her to live, and what she needed from Danny didn’t exactly encourage a long life for the woman Carmilla could see herself sharing hers with.

If Danny’s offhand comments were to be believed, then the owner of their temporary home would be coming to check on their property at some point. She had also implied that this person would greet Danny and any other trespasser the same way Carmilla’s mob contacts would greet her after she turned down their admittedly generous offer to work for the Family full time. Only meeting Danny was keeping her from regretting the decision to refuse, Mother tried to kill her and the town she was supposed to live in didn’t sound like it was comparable to the university town she had left behind.

“Hey babe?” Carmilla called from her place lounging on the bed. She had no shoes on and one of her meatier books propped open on her knees. Danny was cleaning her many, many firearms and counting her bullets carefully, keeping track in a notebook Carmilla honestly didn’t want to consider. Carmilla could see Danny turning out to be an insane serial killer who kept track of the wealthy young women she took into her cabin in the woods and fucked before brutally murdering them. If she was a serial killer, then Carmilla commended her for her commitment to the act, though it would better explain why law enforcement was so willing to shoot her on sight. An outstanding warrant for her arrest completely explained that particular incident neatly. “Could you stop that for a sec?”

Dropping her work, Danny nearly dove into the bed next to her, huffing as her leg informed her that it was still injured and Carmilla glared at her for hurting herself further. Danny just grinned in response, kissing Carmilla’s cheek sloppily. Carmilla flicked her nose affectionately, and kissed her properly to gather her courage for the words she had to say.

If Carmilla couldn’t convince Danny to go along with her half-formed plan, they were going to be killed here by the owner, or the local law, or the mob. Someone was going to find them the longer they stayed still next to their last know whereabouts. With her plan, they could have a small shot at freedom.

“Can I help you with something or is this a cuddle summons?” Danny asked, kissing Carmilla’s jawline as she settled into the doctor’s side. Carmilla kissed her back with enthusiasm, trying to soften her up before she made her proposal.

“We need to get out of here, sooner rather than later, correct?” Carmilla started to break into the subject. Danny groaned.

“So this isn’t just a need to be closer to me, I feel so used,” she complained over-dramatically. “What does the mistress want from her humble servant today?”

Carmilla dug a knuckle into Danny’s uninjured thigh, twisting it until her entire leg jumped. The title rankled unpleasantly in Carmilla’s mind, twirling into some rough approximation of Mother that made Carmilla sick to her stomach. Danny, beautiful Danny, seemed to notice her discomfort immediately and stopped her teasing smile in its tracks.

“We are partners, you shoot things, I’ll patch you up when this inevitably goes to hell in a hand basket,” she corrected Danny swiftly. Danny leaned up to kiss her again, splaying her hand across Carmilla’s stomach.

“Where do you suggest we go? I’m going out on a limb and presuming back to your university isn’t exactly an option,” Danny said, nuzzling into Carmilla’s neck to let the other woman explain her thoughts.

“That’s where the murderers are, so no,” Carmilla admitted, trailing her fingers up and down Danny’s bare arm. The tank top was new to Danny’s wardrobe, and Carmilla wanted to cut off the sleeves of every other shirt Danny owned. Her arms were scarred and Carmilla could get right on board with that now she was being exposed to them. “Although I do want to go towards the other murderers after us so we might as well.”

“Filling me with confidence here, doc,” Danny said with a grin into Carmilla’s suddenly highly sensitive neck.

“We could go back there as a last resort, they might not kill me if I go to them before they can find me,” she theorised out loud, smirking at the gooseflesh rising on Danny’s arms. “But we will be needing some sort of capital to get started all over again there.”

Danny stopped her gentle snuggling into Carmilla, her body refusing to move in her panic. This was the part where Carmilla turned to her and demanded to know why she hadn’t come clean. Potentially killing people and being shot over and over again weren’t even remotely the worst skeletons sitting in Danny’s closet. Carmilla could be a spy for another nation and she still couldn’t get to Danny’s level of ‘I have fucked up in the past’. She knew it was bad because she refused to introduce herself properly to anyone, ever. Eventually, Danny found her voice. “What did you have in mind?”

“In a line of employment that may or may not lead to having a bag full of poisons, I might have earned a significant amount of money,” she began her plan, trying to keep her tone light and joking. “I propose we go get it.”

“I was under the impression you were already well-off, I have seen your house and it is not small,” Danny said, relaxing as Carmilla seemed willing to bankroll their escape without asking Danny herself about any hypothetical savings she might have. “Why would you need more?”

Carmilla snorted, and poked Danny’s thigh again. “If you were some rich kid who had everything handed to her, then you’d understand how much better you feel when it’s money you earn on your own.”

Danny wanted to die laughing at Carmilla’s explanation. Lawrence and Sons made more money than God. There was no way Carmilla was more of a pampered princess than she was, unless she was God, Danny may have exaggerated her wealth slightly. “I’m sure it’s great, relatively speaking.” She really was, tending bar was the most rewarding thing she had ever done.

“We go into town, go to the bank-”

“And rob it!” Danny felt Carmilla needed some of her spirits lifted. She hid the actual spirits that morning, so Carmilla couldn’t turn to drink to alleviate her boredom. “I’ll get the guns, you pack the stitches!”

Carmilla laughed, “no, we do not rob a bank I’m pretty sure my Mother owns. That would be suicidal.” Carmilla said this as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. She scratched at Danny’s arm and delighted in her shivering. “We make a withdrawal like regular humans.”

Pouting, Danny nipped Carmilla’s neck gently, making her displeasure at doing things the normal way known. “Can I bring a gun anyway? I’m pretty sure I’m now wanted for murder if not witchcraft. They can’t know you’re helping me so how else would I have survived my wounds?” Carmilla hummed as she considered this. Danny pressed her lips to flesh to capture the pleasing vibrations for herself. “I promise to not shoot anyone not already shooting at me?”

“I think you might have to bring some smaller guns, for show,” Carmilla hesitantly began to sketch out her plan of action. She could feel the Danny from the future not liking it one bit. “And a hat, a hat is going to be totally necessary.”

Danny stopped her affectionate cuddling and kissing. “Do I want to know why?” Danny ventured, keeping herself calm. There was no way Carmilla was going to suggest the conclusion Danny’s mind supplied.

“How do you feel about cross-dressing?” Danny lifted herself up and glared at Carmilla. “I’m not the one suspected of kidnapping if not murder!”

Danny wanted to argue, but she also didn’t want to get shot again. The men under her family’s employ would probably kill her on sight without a second thought. Carmilla’s Mother, from what Danny had seen in her limited time in the cold house and from her partner’s few and far between stories, might have more drag addicted sycophants who would try to kill them both on sight. “If I do go along with your idea, what’s stopping your Mother from killing you outright?”

Carmilla brushed Danny’s ginger hair out of her eyes, biting her own bottom lip with worry. Danny’s opinion of her mattered more than Carmilla knew until the moment it could turn sour permanently. Still, it was the only way Carmilla could see them getting away cleanly. “I show up with a career military man who is armed to the teeth and ready to launch an investigation on my Mother and her suspicious dealings at the bank and the little problem of her missing daughter.”

“Whom I have gallantly rescued from an evil drifter?”

“You killed you if anyone asks,” Carmilla confirmed, getting into the logistics of the plan. It was a nice break from the monotony of her days in the cabin. “I might have a set of papers and a badge you can use. They say the former owner is around your height and he was all pretty with the red hair like you.”

Danny deliberated while Carmilla played with her hair, admiring it and tried to keep her eyes on Danny.

“I might have some men’s clothing, in the same way that you might have army documentation,” Danny said eventually. “I won’t ask if you don’t?”

Carmilla answered her with a kiss, happy that they were back to their no questions asked or answered equilibrium.

“How much money and where do we run to?” Danny tried to get more information out of Carmilla, they didn’t have time to be closed off to each other. The owner was due sooner rather than later if he kept to his usual schedule, which would be bad and Danny would have to add another ‘-cide’ to her repertoire. Though maybe Carmilla could work some poison or doctor violence on the evil bastard. “I’m a fan of anywhere but here.”

Carmilla gently pulled Danny back down onto the bed. “Why were you on the way here? You never said.”

“I was passing through, exactly like I said,” Danny answered. She consoled herself in her half-truth, that’s just how they communicated with each other. They didn’t lie per say, only failed to explain everything and held back details that others might otherwise seem necessary. “This part of the region usually has some work behind a bar or doing construction. A lot of moderately wealthy people out here too good to build their own houses, yet not quite rich enough to have Lawrence and Sons’ build it for them.”

If Carmilla noticed Danny’s split second hesitance over saying her own last name, she didn’t say anything. Danny considered putting on the clothes in the closet. They weren’t hers, but she knew they fit almost perfectly. It wouldn’t be the first time she pretended to be him, though her hair was significantly longer now than it was back in her old life.

“Tomorrow, I’ll work on getting your hair all under your hat, you figure out how to look like a military man, and we both do our best to not get distracted,” Carmilla announced, leaving very little room for Danny to argue. For someone of her size, Danny could wiggle through some tiny spaces.

“You expect to be able to control yourself while I’m going to half naked all day?” Danny prodded at Carmilla’s resolve. Carmilla could feel the mischievous grin against her neck and considered faking a sudden fainting spell to avoid having to respond. “I am yet to be with a woman who didn’t like me in a vest and my hat.”

Carmilla latched onto the thread Danny unwittingly dangled in front of her face. “Other women, is it? How many other women do you have stashed in the middle of these woods?”

Carmilla didn’t care one bit about any women Danny may have been with in the past or even in the present if that’s where she went every day. Though she did take pleasure in Danny’s worried hitching to her breath. That was something Carmilla would definitely miss when they inevitably were forced to part ways.

“Six, but I like you so much more than them that I am willing to go cross-dressing for you,” Danny soothed, her hand trailing up Carmilla’s stomach until she was grazing the bottom of her ribs. “And I don’t break out the men’s clothing for just anyone.”

“You just want another shot at the law in town,” Carmilla tried to distract Danny from her fairly one-track mind. Danny didn’t seem to notice, and continued on her path upwards, discovering that Carmilla had forewent undergarments that morning. “No amount of sex is going to make me let you kill them for no reason.”

Danny whined, very attractive. “But they shot me first!”

Carmilla yanked on Danny’s shoulder until the other woman was on top of her and she could properly look into big blue eyes. “And you can shoot back if they do something overtly illegal or we fail completely and shoot you on sight!”

Danny mulled it over, her fingers still in distracting motion. 

“Fine, but I get to decide what ‘illegal’ means.”


	6. The Sheriff Is A Threat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla distinctly remembered having a long conversation about the many ways Danny could play this that didn’t involve provoking the enemy into shooting her, Danny had clearly been secretly asleep throughout the entire thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I learn how to spell the word sheriff...after getting it wrong twenty times in a row.

Danny cleaned up nice.

Her black slacks, paired with the loose vest and deep red tie, did things to Carmilla’s brain that she didn’t have the time to act upon. They had spent far too much of the previous day lost in each other, they didn’t need to lose more time to distractions.

Danny adjusted the badge on her hip as her pair of revolvers remained secure on her upper thighs, much lower than any man would have them but she was gambling on no one being experienced enough to tell the difference. Carmilla whistled when she came back into the cabin. Danny gave her best charming grin. “Like it?”

Carmilla moved to the desk and picked up Danny’s wide-brimmed hat. She approached slowly, taking in all of her lover as carefully as possible. There were a thousand ways the day could go wrong, so Carmilla wanted a clean image of Danny lodged firmly in her mind. For courage, and maybe some luck too.

“We need to do something about the hair,” Carmilla ignored the question easily. “And your tie is uneven.”

Danny frowned, hands rising from her belt buckle to adjust the wayward tie. Carmilla cracked, smiling despite her attempt at nonchalance. She moved around Danny and guided the other woman to sit on the bed. Carmilla knelt behind her and began the long process of braiding Danny’s mane of hair down so it could be tucked into the hat. Danny sighed, all worry about messing up her tie fading from her mind as Carmilla played with her hair. She was inviting a world of teasing, but it felt so nice she found she didn’t care. If they lived through this, then Carmilla was doing her hair all the time.

It took the better part of an hour, but Carmilla finally got Danny’s hair tamed well enough to hide underneath her hat. When Danny turned to face her lover, Carmilla had to pat herself on the back. Danny could pass for a man, if she held herself right and could do something about her voice. A very young man, but all military men that would carry weapons like Danny’s were young.

Carmilla kissed her, leaving an imprint of the red lipstick she was wearing on Danny’s lips. “You should go wash that off, and get a look at yourself, handsome,” she advised, teasing her Danny within an inch of her life. “We’re leaving in five.”

“You got your poisons? We might need them if I’m not allowed to shoot people,” Danny whined and pouted as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. “Is the red really necessary?”

Carmilla smirked, flicking a spare hair tie at Danny’s head. “I’m only taking one. It’s the only one that doesn’t kill when airborne, so it’s really the only option if I need to discard it quickly. And yes, the red is a necessity, always.”

“You’re telling me that if any of those things shatter?” Danny left her question open. Carmilla wished she hadn’t spoken, Danny had that look of fear again.

“We both probably die, yes. Which is why we aren’t taking any of them,” she explained, grabbing Danny’s overcoat and holding it out for her. “Shall we?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

Despite Carmilla dressing as she did the day her driver tried to kill her, they managed to navigate through the woodlands without hassle. Though Danny did have trouble keeping her hat in the right place atop her head so it effectively hid her very feminine hair from sight.

The town was exactly as tiny and terrible as Carmilla imagined it on her way back from medical school. It even lacked the vibrant colour of her university, everything a dreary shade of brown aside from the shining bank that stood at the end of the main thoroughfare. Carmilla was shocked that Mother didn’t insist upon living at the most prominent place in town. Carmilla barely glanced at the people who inhabited this town, grouped in their odd clusters and social groupings. They would not be staying beyond tomorrow, so there was no point. If anyone she knew saw them, they were dead anyway.

Danny was aware enough of the town’s people for the both of them. Her eyes darted around, her free hand buried in her pocket and her thumb near the revolver that she was ready to fire at the first sign of unrest regarding them. Carmilla hurting her ankle and being incapacitated for an entire afternoon sprung to the forefront of Danny’s mind, flaring her protective instincts and promoting intense concentration on the people around them.

“Why hello there!” Danny nearly shot the man, which would have pissed off Carmilla to high Hell and back. Carmilla regarded the man as if he were a fly in her soup, just as she had been raised to do. “Not often we get visitors on foot around these parts!”

Danny knew the voice and begged the man to remain an idiot. He was the sheriff, grating voice and all. She turned to get a look at his reasonably taken care of form as he sauntered out of the jail to greet the supposed newcomers to town. If anyone was going to recognise her, it would be the man that shot the eighth bullet into her body. She really wanted to shoot first this time, the man got off easy before and she had a score to settle with him.

“You are exceptionally well-armed, good sir,” the sheriff noted, his own hand resting threateningly on top of his gun. Danny took the gesture to be a challenge, and responded by removing her hand from her pocket and hooking her thumb into her belt next to the gold badge of authority shining near her belt buckle. “That ain’t a sheriff star, and this is, so you get your hands where I can see ‘em,” he ordered, with enough conviction in his voice to make Danny consider it.

“Your little star might mean something in this tiny town, but I am here on official Army business and I will not be obstructed,” Danny threw back her own thinly veiled threat, sliding her hand closer to her gun. The sheriff squinted at her, trying to catch a clear look at the identification sitting on her belt. His fingers curled around the revolver’s grip, and forced Danny to mimic the movement.

Carmilla understood the seriousness of the situation, she really did. However, the absolutely ridiculous overly-present cowboy accent Danny had forced her voice into was infinitely entertaining. Carmilla let the tension between Danny and the sheriff drown out the urge to laugh and mock and tease. Danny was supposed to be a corporal in the damn army, they tended to sound a full octave lower than she as managing, though the sheriff seemed infinitely more concerned with the three guns she had that he could clearly see. Carmilla watched Danny arm herself significantly more comprehensively earlier in the day while she was ‘out for a walk’ while her lover got changed.

“I have also brought this fair lady I liberated from a wild woman in the woods,” Danny tried to distract the sheriff from his clear plans to shoot her without even asking for a name. “I fear she’s severely shaken from her ordeal. Her case is why my superiors sent me here, to investigate her disappearance as the local law enforcement managed to fuck up catching the mongrel despite reports of one of you idiots landing a shot on her!”

That did it. The sheriff drew first, causing Danny to follow his lead and the people of the town to take an even larger interest in the proceedings taking place at the entrance to the town. Danny’s gun was pointed directly at the sheriff’s head, while his wavered all over her upper body and occasionally drifted so far off target that he was aimed directly at Carmilla instead of the person he was intending to shoot.

“You will not question me or my men and that girl’s got a sky high reward for her safe return to her loving family. One that I intend to collect once I liberate her from her current captor!”

Now Carmilla wanted to shoot him too, and she decided to let Danny use her judgement when dealing with the man, vowing to only be mildly disapproving if her lover ended up killing the man.

“Does she still have her virtue, Army Man?”

At least their plan to disguise Danny was working perfectly, Carmilla consoled herself despite the rapidly deteriorating situation. She didn’t have time to be offended on her own behalf before Danny was speaking.

“I suggest you stop talking, and soon,” Danny snarled, scaring Carmilla who had watched this woman basically die and come back after being shot. Carmilla noticed properly for the first time in a long while that Danny was really tall, and cut an extremely intimidating figure that Carmilla did not give her credit for as much as she should. The sheriff did not have the same opinion.

“Ah so you’ve fucked her, I’m sure her Mother will be glad to hear it!”

Carmilla stood with half her body hidden behind Danny’s, showing exactly how together she was with the ‘corporal’ who had blown into town like a knight returning from war. For show, Danny was exactly that, rescued maiden and all. In practice, Carmilla was starting to wonder if this woman was moderately suicidal, using the numerous occasions of running into danger headfirst with little regard for her own health as evidence.

“Sheriff, I suggest you drop your weapon, you’re scaring the lady,” warned Danny, using her bad cowboy impression that made Carmilla giggle internally yet seemed to threaten the surprisingly young man just fine. “I cannot abide by a lady in my care being disturbed or worse still, injured ‘cause some small town hick can’t keep it in its holster!”

Carmilla distinctly remembered having a long conversation about the many ways Danny could play this that didn’t involve provoking the enemy into shooting her, Danny had clearly been secretly asleep throughout the entire thing.

“Sir, I am the law around here and you are ordered to disarm yourself!” Good Lord, Carmilla almost heard his voice crack. The man was by no means young, but Carmilla’s view of a decent sheriff involved some kind of grey hair at least. Some wrinkles maybe. “I don’t care whose army you belong to, I will shoot you if you don’t comply!”

“And risk hitting the lady?” Danny challenged, the barrel of her revolver not moving the tiniest bit from directly between his eyes. Carmilla had seen death by head shot before and had no desire to see one happen live before her eyes. “That’s a threat of murder against her, unless you think yourself a marksman, boy.”

His eyes narrowed as they flicked between Danny’s eyes, the end of her gun, and the badge clipped to her belt. Carmilla held tight to Danny’s arm, offering what little support she could as Danny took in her opponent with distinct disinterest. If only the lack of interest in Danny extended to not antagonising pretty much everyone she met besides Carmilla.

They had drawn a small crowd, no more than people stopping to stare at the two perceived authorities on law and order facing off. The high possibility of someone dying always kept interest in small towns like this, Danny had seen hundreds of people falling into inaction as deadly confrontations festered in front of them. These people would be witness to their own sheriff dying if the man didn’t put his gun down. Danny certainly wasn’t going to miss, as far as the town was concerned, she was a corporal in some army and held just as much ‘get out of jail free’ power as the sheriff did.

The idiot wasn’t even aiming for anything vital. Danny knew what staring down the barrel of a fatal bullet felt like, and this was not it.

“Now look here, young man-”

Danny vaguely heard the shot go off, her finger squeezed her own trigger of its own accord. His shot went away from her centre, grazing her raised arm in the process. Carmilla yelped, Danny noted with pride that she didn’t scream. The sheriff fell to the ground, blood pooling around his chest and dripping onto the ground.

Carmilla’s fingers dug into Danny’s arm, pulling her towards the bar Danny previously worked at. Danny let herself be dragged away, the weight of another life ended by her weighing around her heart and mind. The haze of killing descended over her awareness and she blanked out for what had to be several minutes.

When Danny came back to awareness, Carmilla had her most of the way to an empty table in the bar, and was going through the satchel Danny had worn on their little foray into civilisation. Very exciting, one dead already.

Carmilla took out the medical supplies from Danny’s bag, selecting the alcohol and her suture kit. Danny sat heavily at the table, raising a hand to order them both something to drink. She waved off the waitresses look of concern at the slash across her arm. Carmilla didn’t make eye contact with anyone, lest someone other than the now-dead sheriff notice who Carmilla was, surely Mother had given a fairly accurate description to everyone underneath her fine heel.

“To be fair-”

“Shot is shot, no matter how minor, you idiot,” snapped Carmilla, worry manifesting itself in her voice as anger. Danny promptly shut up and let the doctor do her work in silent concentration. “Stay still.”

The beer was welcomed by Danny and wine far too good for the bar was placed in front of Carmilla. Neither acknowledged the woman while Carmilla did the toughest of the stitching. She used their nearly pure alcohol to clean the wound and smirked at Danny’s hiss of pain.

“Nice accent, by the way,” Carmilla complimented, checking over her work and patting the uninjured portion of Danny’s arm to signal that she was done. Danny rolled her sleeve back down, and shrugged her coat back on.

“I can’t make my voice deep enough otherwise,” Danny admitted quietly. With more confidence she continued, “onward to the bank?”

Carmilla downed the wine in a distinctly unladylike fashion, Danny watching on with raised eyebrows as she sipped her beer. “Can’t have you getting shot again for nothing, now can we?”

Danny drained her beer bottle dry and gave her injured arm a few experimental stretches. Finding it to be satisfactory though throbbing with pain, Danny stood and offered her hand to Carmilla.

“Into the belly of the beast, dear lady?”

Carmilla allowed Danny to pull her to her feet and looped her arm around her partner’s uninjured elbow. They cut an attractive image, and she felt jealous eyes upon her.

“For fortune or death,” she agreed, bracing herself for a nice, boring trip to the bank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who wants to guess how many people get shot in the next chapter? It's between one and fifty, go!


	7. We're Going To Survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nice and boring trip to the bank went well. Right up until the bank robbers showed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end, please check out the end notes for details about where we're going from here.

The nice and boring trip to the bank went well. Right up until the bank robbers showed up.

They got the whole way into the managers office, barely anyone wanting to see Danny’s identification and Carmilla’s was accepted without question. They might have sent a messenger to Mother, but they were going to be long gone before she could formulate any kind of a response. Danny had weapons and a military persona if the bank manager refused to comply with Carmilla’s request to clean out her bank account.

“Miss Ka-”

“Carmilla is fine, thank you,” she cut him off before Danny could learn her last name. There was no way Danny knew anything about the family Karnstein, yet Carmilla felt the need to keep the information close to her chest anyway. Danny hadn’t shared anything about herself on the subject and Carmilla certainly wasn’t going first. Danny flatly ignored the new information, didn’t want to know. “I have decided to start my medical practice elsewhere, closer to the Colonel’s base in fact, and I will need my savings as start-up capital.”

This wasn’t too far from the truth. They decided to lie as little as possible when it came to the banking system. Danny grinned proudly next to her, playing the role of future fiancee perfectly. The manager’s eyes flicked between the pair of them, dawning realisation slowly settling in as their romantic undertones hit his apparently tiny brain. “Of course, Miss Carmilla.”

He was on his feet and rushing to the vault so quickly, Carmilla thought he might fall down the stairs in his haste. Danny idly took out her recently-fired revolver, inspecting the weapon for any flaws that would stop it from firing again. Carmilla rolled her eyes at the precaution.

“We aren’t robbing the place, alright? He’s going to get the cash, if he doesn’t let us leave or more law enforcement shows up, then you can shoot our way out if you really have to,” Carmilla hissed without looking at Danny. The sunlight reflected off the shining metal of the gun into Carmilla’s eyes. “Will you put that away please?”

Danny complied as the manager returned with a light leather case bulging with paper money. Carmilla couldn’t take her eyes off the case, watching every movement with invested interest. She wasn’t aware of what that much money looked like in person. Beside her, Danny was reacting as if it was just another day for her, and Carmilla commended her for keeping in character with such grace.

“Now I need your signature, Miss Carmilla, and yours, Corporal, as insurance for the bank’s accounts, you understand,” the manager explained with a patronising smile Carmilla’s way. Danny’s hands itched to draw her guns, though she restrained herself. One murder per day was quite enough. “Then you can both be on your way, and I wish you all the best for the futu-”

An explosion rocked the sturdy building, the people downstairs screaming and running. There was a chorus of authoritative voices and gunfire. Machine gun, if Danny was hearing it correctly. That was just fantastic.

The manager darted out of his office, dropping the case full of money on his way out. The shouting downstairs got louder followed by more bullets flying. Danny and Carmilla shared a glance.

“Hide, fight, or surrender?” Danny presented the options without hesitation or fear. Carmilla wondered for the millionth time if Danny wasn’t especially all there, mentally speaking.

“All three, in that order,” Carmilla answered, catching on to how Danny expected to do any of these options. Together they levered the manager’s obscenely expensive and heavy desk onto its side and went to crouch behind it. Danny stumbled behind Carmilla, collapsing against the hard wood and clutching at her side.

“Ouch. The bandannas on their faces and,” Danny paused to glance up and out of the room, “heavy artillery suggest they’ve done this before.”

“Bank robberies don’t actually happen,” Camilla hissed into Danny’s ear, her hand coming down in a claw to rest over Danny’s latest bullet wound. Nails that were meticulously filed still managed to gain traction in her thigh, causing her to wince involuntarily. "People don't actually put stupid bandannas on their faces and go running into banks with really big guns and fucking hell, she's tiny!"

Danny's head snapped up, narrowly missing an opportune moment to break Carmilla's nose, interest flaring at the sudden change of tracks. She poked her head over the edge of the heavy manager's desk they'd tipped over to catch a glimpse of the tiniest bank robber she had ever seen. The gun was almost as big as she was! Danny ducked back down at the diminutive woman turned to search for anyone they'd missed.

"Tiny? Yes," Danny started, a hand coming to rest on Carmilla's lower back. "Also has a nice ass? Also yes."

Carmilla stared at her lover in disbelief. She held it for a full count of three before cracking and popping up for a quick look, clearly not trusting Danny's judgement of the situation. Bank robbery, sure. All 'Danny please protect me with your overly large body'. Girl is hot? Must confirm for self.

Danny grinned at her when she came back down. "Yeah?"

"Is this going to be a thing?" Carmilla asked, not thinking about how cute Danny was when her head tilted to the side in confusion. "Checking out random women willing to kill us."

Danny shrugged. "Are we complaining?"

"No, just like to know where we stand. Not everyone is as laid back as you are, Stretch," Carmilla reminded her partner, leaning back into her reassuring hand. "Do you have an overly violent plan to deal with them?"

"You two could at least whisper, you know," came the voice that they had previously only heard shouting at them to get the fuck down immediately. "You don't have to annoy me into shooting you, not coming out when I asked you to will get you that kind of treatment all on its lonesome."

Carmilla felt the hand on her back tense, no doubt getting ready to do something athletic and what she thought was brave.

"Hot voice too," noted Danny, continuing to speak at a normal volume. The hot, tiny bank robber with the nice voice huffed and stomped her foot. "Aw, and cute!"

Resisting the urge to bite Danny, Carmilla's hands went into her bag, sifting through it for something she could use as a weapon that the enemy wouldn't necessarily identify as a weapon. A syringe she'd filled with her mostly untraceable poison fell into her hand at the bottom of her bag. If she emptied it, probably into Danny if she kept going how she was, an injection of air to the right place could at the very least give her a chance to talk the other criminals into a potentially fatal wound in their near future. She doubted they had a doctor on their little team.

"I am not cu-," the woman started to object, her voice pitching upwards sharply. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Get the hell out from there or I will start shooting!"

Danny didn't seem worried. Carmilla rolled her eyes, of course she wasn't. What was another bullet hole? She barely had a chance to formulate a sufficiently restraining insult before the warmth was gone from her back and Danny's red hair was flashing past her as she vaulted over the desk.

"So shoot," Danny dared. Carmilla recognised the edge to her voice, the same one that was there when she killed the Sheriff, when they tended to Danny’s glancing bullet wound, the voice appeared again. It made her wonder about all the things she and Danny still weren't telling each other. If Carmilla was still keeping her secrets, then Danny still had her own.

That voice was going to get her killed one day. Carmilla would strangle her soon if she kept trying to get herself hurt.

She heard the robber take a step back, the tiny thing must have been intimidated by Carmilla's brash giant advancing. "You want to die?"

Oh girly, that did not sound at all confident. You're going to have to do a lot better than that to deal with Miss Nine Gunshot Wounds.

"We all have to die for something, and you don't have enough bang in that gun to stop me from getting to you," Danny explained with the utmost calm. Carmilla imagined this is what is must have been like as Danny sat alone at their dead drop with a rifle on her lap and men out searching for her blood. "I've already been shot three times now to keep her safe, you think you're a better shot than the sheriff?"

Oh.

They needed to have a nice dinner. Exchange flowers or jewelry. Drink some wine, introduce themselves properly.

Anything but the over-dramatic acts of devotions they'd been stringing together these last few weeks. Something normal that didn't make her chest tighten with worry and her heart melt over Danny.

"How nice," the robber sneered, "when's the wedding?"

Danny snorted. "Go get yourself a shotgun and we'll talk," she retorted easily, her boots making significantly more noise on the hardwood floors than the robber's had. The evil criminal who, Carmilla noted, backed right on up again as Danny advanced her position. “My hands are up and away from my guns, where are you going?"

Liar, Carmilla accused silently. She watched Danny tuck a knife into the inside of her coat as they got dressed that morning and there was no way it wasn't still there. Carmilla herself had tucked a sizable knife into each one of her boots, knowing how dangerous a venture into Mother's town was bound to be. They would discuss both of them having guns when they ran back to the cabin.

Back to the cabin. When they got back to the cabin, and Carmilla had to stitch up another bullet wound somewhere on Danny's body.

"Other individual with a death wish, please come out now," the robber demanded, some of her confidence returning. She must have raised her gun. Carmilla heard Danny's foot shuffling, not demanding that Carmilla stay put nor rushing the woman. Therefore.

"Alright then, as you wish," she drawled, pushing forward and slowly making her way around their limited cover. She swung her hips and didn't adjust her shirt as it slipped off one of her shoulders. The woman, admittedly tiny and hot, broke her staring contest with Danny to give Carmilla an unnecessarily slow look. Her eyes swept up and down, focusing on her more on display assets. Carmilla smirked, silly girl.

She took the view away as soon as she offered it, her arms winding around Danny's midsection, coming to rest with her thumbs hooking behind her belt buckle.

“Now, are you two going to surrender quietly, or am I going to have to kill you?”

Carmilla felt that this woman had no legs to stand on with making threats. She and her gang may have cowed the general public but Danny killed the sheriff without breaking stride and Carmilla couldn’t bring herself to care. Carmilla ignored the hot robber and cuddled further into Danny’s back, pointedly ignoring the warm liquid slowly flowing out of the taller woman’s side. Hopefully Tiny would continue to not notice how much damage she had done accidentally.

“You ever killed anyone?” Danny asked her, hands still raised in the air. Carmilla had perfect access to every one of Danny’s many weapons, if it came to that. Danny wasn’t moving aside, so she was apparently okay with Carmilla using her as a human shield. Carmilla couldn’t see the woman, but she presumed she didn’t answer either way. “I have, and when you kill as many people as I have, you can recognise that burn in others.”

“Why ask?”

Carmilla lifted her head from Danny’s back. Danny’s heart was racing, which worried Carmilla endlessly.

“Wanted to see if you’d admit it,” Danny replied, raising her hands a little higher. When did this situation change track? Carmilla removed her arms from Danny, stepping back away from her lover. “No witnesses, right? That’s how you three operate?”

Carmilla saw the robber’s chin lift almost imperceptibly. “That’s the idea, can’t have a description getting out there.”

Danny’s breathing picked up. “You’re leaving one today, in exchange for more money than you’ve ever dreamed about,” she offered, her voice cold and detached. Carmilla was grateful that she didn’t reach back for comfort or companionship. She wasn’t stupid and caught on to what Danny was suggesting, though she had no idea where the heck Danny was going to get that kind of money. “The good doctor here lives.”

“What could possibly be worth giving up my anonymity?” Danny sighed at the robber’s words, she really didn’t want to do this while Carmilla could hear them. A nice memory would have been better, bravely standing up to bank robbers without a second thought, much better. “Keeping in mind that I can just shoot you for anything you might have on you.”

Danny squared her shoulders, and lowered her hands for the first time since the bank exploded. Please forgive me, she pleaded silently with Carmilla.

“My name is Danny Lawrence,” she said quietly, a hand keeping Carmilla behind her. Carmilla thought her name suited her nicely, her mind taking a moment to register where else in her life the name ‘Lawrence’ appeared. “I am worth more in bounty, alive, than all the money in this bank.”

Danny kept careful watch on the robber as her jaw fell open behind her bandanna. “You’d come with us? Unarmed?”

Carmilla wanted to stop her, to fight, or scream. Literally anything but backing away from her lover until she connected with the upturned table. Lawrence and Sons were slowly monopolising all forms of business and were the only ones the higher ups in the mafia she worked for feared well and truly. Anyone that scared them, more than certainly deserved Carmilla’s fear tenfold.

“I’ll come quietly if you promise to let her go,” promised Danny, waving an arm in Carmilla’s general direction. The robber thought about it, her gun trained squarely between Danny’s eyes. Carmilla saw the blood running down Danny’s side, and knew why she was doing this. The crew robbing the bank might end up halfway to the nearest Marshall Office with a dead body rather than a live Lawrence. “Deal?”

The tiny woman nodded eventually, motioning with her gun for Danny to proceed out of the bank, keeping her gun aimed directly at Danny. Carmilla remained stunned as her parter slowly walked to her death or imprisonment with an ease and confidence Carmilla admired and cursed in equal measure.

“My family won’t come after you if you leave the cabin tomorrow, they will be there within the week, dear doctor, so I recommend leaving as soon as you are able,” Danny advised over her shoulder, giving Carmilla an apologetic smile. The woman with the rifle raised her gun higher and then Danny was gone.

Carmilla was alone in the middle of a bank robbery, in a town her Mother owned, and her only ally was gone. Downstairs, a massacre took place.

The money, her money, called to her from behind the manager’s upturned desk. Enough to start again, to forget the last month had ever happened.

Or to hunt down a gang of criminals.

Carmilla had the entire walk back to the cabin to decide, one way or the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still want Laura in this AU? Huh, do ya?!
> 
> Now we have a choice to make, I can either continue this AU next or put more into the We Three Idiots series possibly before I'm done posting the end of Imaginary Devils. So, please let me know what you guys want more of in the comments and thanks for reading!
> 
> (I swear I like Danny, she's just so shoot-able)


End file.
